2.04.2016

Baby #2!

Finding out
We found out that we were expecting on June 4th. It was a Saturday and I had conked out on the couch during both of Eleanor's naps. Aaron was convinced I was pregnant but I thought there was no way. Around 9 pm that night Aaron went to the store to pick up a home pregnancy test because he was so sure. I took the test, left it in the bathroom and said, "There's no way." (Side note: we had been trying and of course I wanted to be pregnant but I just felt like it was way too soon to tell.) So Aaron went into the bathroom after the three minutes, walked out and looked up and said, "You're pregnant!" If you know Aaron then you know there's a high possibility that he is joking so I didn't believe it until I went over and saw the two lines on the test myself. We were blown away but also crazy excited. We took a slew of selfies to capture all of our emotions. I can't seem to find them in the abyss that is iPhoto but hopefully I can come back and add them later.

The First Trimester
That first trimester was a major doozy for me. For some reason the nausea felt much more intense than it did during my first pregnancy and I ended up laying on the couch for a good month while tossing Eleanor toy after toy to try and keep her occupied. This was when we introduced her to one episode of Daniel Tiger a day, which felt majorly guilt inducing for me but also totally life saving.

I had my first doctors appointment at nearly 10 weeks and the ultrasound showed the cutest little peanut. I felt this feeling of pure love wash over me for that baby. I looked over at Aaron to say, "Do you see the baby?!" Aaron was trying to wrangle Eleanor in the patient chair but he was able to pause for a moment to really take it all in and it seemed to hit him hard too. We found out that my due date was February 14th so we officially dubbed this baby our "love baby" given its predicted Valentine's arrival. We went out to lunch afterwards to celebrate.

Telling the Family
We FaceTimed my mom and dad for my dad's birthday (July 20th) and as part of my dad's present we told them that we were expecting another baby! My mom said she had already guessed it because of how tired I'd been looking in all our previous FaceTimes. Mothers always know. We then texted the rest of my family with the ultrasound photo above to fill them in and it was fun getting their texts back.

The following week we were in Riverside with Aaron's family so we were able to tell them in person (I wrote about it here). It was so nice to have the cat out of the bag because hiding your exhaustion is never an easy thing.

The Second Trimester
This pregnancy has on the whole been a great experience, especially after getting through the morning sickness. I started feeling kicks much earlier (around 15 weeks!), which is seriously the greatest part of carrying a baby. It's all just such a miracle. My clothes were getting tighter much earlier on too and I started rubber banding my pant button around 16 weeks (if not earlier).

At 22 weeks, we found out the baby's gender (more on that soon) and then at 29 weeks I took the awful sugar test to check if I had gestational diabetes. The lab messed up my results so I had to go back and do it a second time. I don't know why but it was so much worse this second pregnancy. It's a miracle I didn't throw up.

We started talking to Eleanor about "the baby in mommy's belly" pretty early on but it's really hard to measure how much she gets it all. She points to my belly now when we say "Where's baby brother?" so that's something at least! We have a couple books about being a big sister too, which seems to be helping. Eleanor absolutely loves babies though--real ones and fake ones. She carries her baby doll around all day long, changing it's diaper, putting it down for naps, giving it a bottle, folding it's arms for prayers. It's really incredible how much she gets the whole mothering thing. She also prays for all the real life babies in her life by name, the most frequent ones being Molly, Winnie and Ophelia. All of these signs lead me to believe that she will love this little brother like crazy. I do get a little stressed though when she panics at the sight of me holding another baby. She'll love the baby but maybe won't love sharing her mama so much.

Documentation
I did a terrible job taking pictures of myself while pregnant. In fact, I really lost the desire to take any pictures at all. However, I tried to round up some pictures of me throughout this pregnancy and here's what I found...

16 weeks along:

^^The first time I attempting photographing the bump, even though I felt it appeared much earlier than 16 weeks.

17 Weeks:

^^Not a great view of my belly by any means but those shorts definitely were not zipped up. I was feeling in the pudgy stage here for sure.

^^Ahhh, there's the bump for reals. Weeks 20-29 really are awesome. You have a legit baby bump happening, you can still stretch many of your normal shirts/sweaters and you just feel (a little more) "pregnant cute."

28 Weeks:

^^At Annie McKell's wedding (more on that soon!). Hello huge belly.

30 Weeks:

^^Aaron's holiday work party. This bridesmaid dress from Annie Jamieson's wedding was a life saver for this Christmas formal event. I couldn't zip the dress up in the back (hence the sweater) but it still fit around my middle, thank goodness.

32 Weeks:

^^Christmas day! Gotta love Eleanor's face here.

35 Weeks:

^^Lounging around the house with Eleanor. I wasn't feeling awesome that day so we turned on the tv and laid in my bed together. Eleanor had been flipping through Aaron's bible and ended up holding it like so for the whole tv watching session. Super cute.

^^Date night

^^Hospital pre-registering.

How I'm feeling Now
I'm 38.5 weeks along now, dilated 3 cm and feeling like this baby could come any time.

Every night I go to bed thinking, "Tonight could be the night!" And then I wake up and realize I'm still pregnant. Bummer. But then the other day when I picked up a book about nursing and I remembered what a doozy nursing can be in the beginning, I was suddenly fine to wait a couple more days. Aaron also keeps reminding me that the longer this baby cooks, the bigger he will be, which we both believe translates into a better sleeper right off the bat (or at least we can hope!).

So I waffle between being super antsy for him to come and super ok to wait just a touch longer. Oh the things that pregnancy does to your sanity!

Eleanor's been asking for "baby brother" a lot though these past two days so hopefully he comes before too long :)